Sound or Silence
by skittles and win
Summary: If given the choice, which would you choose? The pain of constant noise, or the endless silence? Semi-preview of a next-gen Akatsuki fanfiction in-the-works. Rated T just in case I missed some 'suggestive theme' or something. I tend to do that...


**Disclaimer: **I created Xani and Antser, and thus I am fairly sure I own them. Their parents, on the other hand, are not mine.

This _is_ fanfiction, believe it or not. It's a semi-preview for a new project I'm working on, entirely based on the children of the Akatsuki. Which is to say, yes, a fanfiction populated entirely by original characters.

* * *

"I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone else."

"No, no, I'm sure I've seen you somewhere. I remember that thing on your head, I saw it and asked myself just how you could hear anything with your ears covered like that."

"Please, sir, there's no need to shout, I _can_ hear, quite well in fact."

A smirk painted Antser's lips as he watched his silver-haired friend struggle to simultaneously remain anonymous to the old man and keep himself from cringing at the shouting the old man was doing. Xani had always had very sensitive ears—thus the reason he wore headphones at all times, to help block out some of the noise—but he had also always been very good at keeping his cool in situations that were particularly aggravating. Such as, say, the persistent old man who wouldn't just let them check in and get to bed. "I can assure you, sir, that we have just arrived. Any resemblance my colleague may bear to someone you've seen is entirely coincidental. Now, could you please allow us to pay for a room for the night so we can sleep? We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and I would _hate_ to be late." The way Antser spoke left no room for argument, and the old man went much faster in the task of finding which rooms were open.

"I'm sorry, boys, but I've only got a few rooms left, and all of them have only one bed."

Xani sighed heavily, and said, "That's fine, I'll sleep on the floor if I have to, would you just hurry up?" Antser arched a thin black eyebrow, silently questioning how tense Xani seemed to be. He was never tense, not unless someone—that 'someone' usually ended up being Antser himself—was trying to remove his headphones. He was _extremely_ protective of those headphones. But that wasn't the case here. Xani was just high strung altogether, and for no visible reason.

After a quick adventure of explaining to the senile old man that yes, they _could_ manage having a single bed, and no, they definitely did _not_ want room service, they were finally led to their room, and left to their own devices. Xani slammed the door shut as they were finally left alone, and winced at the noise he had made himself. Antser turned on him, keeping his voice low for the sake of minimizing the sound in the area. "Are you doing alright? You seem a bit…uptight."

"I'm fine," Xani snapped immediately, the lack of hesitation only adding to the falsity of the statement.

"Really now? Somehow, I just don't believe you. What is it that's got you in such a bad mood?"

Xani glared at the floor to avoid glaring at his partner. He was silent for several moments, which seemed to Antser to be a sign that he was calming down, thinking before he spoke. Finally, he did speak, his voice low and strained. "That couple down there, waiting to get a room….The woman was on her honeymoon. The man was just the first guy she saw who wasn't her newlywed husband."

Antser wondered idly why Xani was mentioning something so irrelevant, then realized that there had been no way for Xani to know what he was saying was true. Unless… "You could hear them? I didn't even realize they were saying anything."

"Of course I could hear them. They were whispering, which might as well be regular speaking when I'm hearing it. My point is, I heard those two loud and clear, while you didn't even realize they were talking. Now, think of what you _did_ hear while we were waiting for the idiot to stop giving me the third degree. Imagine everything you heard, from the old geezer's shouting to the birds singing outside, magnified ten-fold." Xani was much more energetic than usual as he said all this, yet the way he said it had a feeling of repetition, as if he had used this example many times before to get his point across.

Antser did as he was told, and winced as he realized what Xani was trying to say. "That gives me a headache just thinking about it."

Xani sighed lightly and closed his eyes. His voice was much more relaxed as he said, "Precisely." With that simple statement, he practically collapsed onto the bed, staring up at the cracked off-white ceiling through dull eyes. After a few moments of a far from awkward silence, Antser joined him in the same position, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, though neither of the males was really seeing the ceiling. A short time later, Xani's quiet voice echoed throughout the room, dull and lifeless as he spoke. "I've only ever been to well-populated areas two or three times before. This little village is the biggest I've actually been in. Once or twice I've seen them from afar, but I've never had to go into one before. The noise is unbearable, even with my headphones. My head won't stop pounding, and there's nowhere I can go to escape the noise. Even here, where it probably sounds completely silent to you…I can hear _everything_. There's a cat down in the first floor window on the other side of the building, scratching at the window and mewling up a storm because there's a small songbird perched on its sill, just singing away and teasing it mercilessly. The couple we saw downstairs is now three doors down, and the woman isn't so eager to be cheating anymore. The old man who brought us here is back downstairs, taking pills of some sort or another. And that's just the immediate vicinity. I can hear what's going on in the middle of the street, maybe even farther away, and that's with my headphones to block out excess noise. There's just too much happening all that once for me to process. Let's get out of here as soon as possible. Just get in, take care of the assigned target, and get out. Nothing too fancy, no more chase scenes…Not this time."

Antser remained silent during Xani's monologue—the slightly younger male could go off on tangents quite a bit, but he usually only said things that were relevant to whatever it was he needed to say. When he finished with a request that sounded more like an order, Antser found himself wanting to set him straight. Antser was, after all, in all technicalities higher ranked. He was in charge of the missions, and decided what happened when and how. But Xani was obviously suffering in such a 'big' place, so instead Antser found himself saying, "No problem, Xani. We'll keep it simple and fast this time."

Beside him, he heard a quiet sigh of relief. So it really had been just a request. Not that Antser had really thought otherwise; Xani was never one to overstep his boundaries, or even go to his boundaries, in all reality. He was too laid-back and apathetic in most instances to even make mention of his thoughts on whatever matter was being decided. He didn't boss around the ones he outranked—other than his younger brothers on occasion, though he only did that because they were his brothers, and they were extremely reckless—and he even let those he outranked boss _him_ around sometimes. Sometimes, Antser wondered if Xani even knew he was fairly high-ranked at all.

Silence reigned for several more minutes, but it was a comfortable silence, one that simply meant there was nothing more to say. That was how it almost always was with Xani. He certainly spoke an average amount, but he didn't waste words. He said what needed to be said, and when he was d0ne he stopped saying things, simple as that. After over thirty minutes of silent contemplation, just as the sun was beginning to go down, Antser brought it upon himself to say something, to ask a question that had been bugging him for some time now. "Xani…I know you don't like noise. But it can't be all bad, can it?"

Xani remained silent, but it wasn't his usual silence. He wasn't carefully thinking over his words, he was waiting for more. Obviously he didn't think that question needed an answer.

"If you had to make a choice...Would you choose to go without your headphones for the rest of your life, or to become deaf?"

Xani glanced over at his partner, a look that might be taken as slight surprise on his features. He then frowned, furrowed his brow, and lapsed into a different kind of silence, the kind that meant he was considering his words very carefully. Antser did his job and remained silent as well. He would get his answer, in due time. He just had to allow Xani a chance to fight it out in his own mind, and figure out just what the right words were. The silence was much shorter than he had expected.

"I could never choose silence. Noise hurts, but there's a difference between noise and sound. Sound is…beautiful. Sound becomes noise when it becomes unpleasant, when it hurts. As much as I hate noise, constant noise is preferable to constant silence. Because even in noise, there's always some sound remaining. In silence, there's…nothing. Living without sound would be like living without emotions. Everything would become bleak and hopeless. I would live with the constant pain, even if it meant my eventual insanity, if it meant I didn't have to live in silence. Silence would bring about my immediate insanity; I would never be able to take it."

As usual, Xani was brilliant in his every word. He wasn't renowned for his intelligence, but everything he said _was_ brilliant, no matter what he was saying. Antser had found himself fascinated by every word that left Xani's lips, drinking in the not-quite-eloquent language like it was an oasis in the desert. A small smile tugged at the corners of Antser's mouth, and he was unable to resist saying, "I knew it."

* * *

Ha ha, it's done.

Anywho, Xani is Hidan's oldest son, though he isn't immortal and takes after his father to the extent of a single habit: Xani ends up with his shirt off for absolutely no plausible reason. Quite often. But don't worry, the middle and youngest children of Hidan are much more...Hidan-ish.

Antser, Xani's partner in the Akatsuki, is Konan's son. He has one sibling, a younger sister who is presumed dead. I have a feeling she really will be dead, as opposed to a plot device. Antser uses Konan's paper/origami techniques, or at least he will once I do some research and find out how it works...or rather, what it does...


End file.
